President Donald Trump’s election win likely means the creation of a Space National Guard under his administration after he made creating the new reserve force a notable promise during his campaign.
Trump, who will soon be the second president in history who will have served two nonconsecutive terms in office, said during a National Guard Association of the United States conference in August that “as president, I will sign historic legislation creating a Space National Guard.”
The idea has been strongly opposed by the Air Force, Space Force and President Joe Biden’s administration, but it has been heavily pushed by bipartisan groups of lawmakers and National Guard lobbyists.
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The National Guard Association of the United States, or NGAUS, told Military.com on Tuesday that it hasn’t forgotten that promise.
“We look forward to working with the new administration to make the Space National Guard a reality,” retired Maj. Gen. Francis McGinn, the association president, said in an emailed statement.
Debates over the creation of a Space National Guard aren’t new, but received renewed support over the past year, including from the now president-elect.
Meanwhile, Space Force officials have pushed for a different part-time, active-duty service model — which was signed into law in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act — instead of a traditional Guard or reserve model.
The issue reached a tipping point when an Air Force proposal earlier this year opted to transfer Air National Guard units with space missions into the active-duty Space Force, bringing swift condemnation from every governor in the country and bipartisan groups of lawmakers.
There have been prior legislative proposals, from lawmakers such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., aiming to create a Space National Guard, but they never made it far in Congress.
Trump told the NGAUS conference that Rubio is “very much a fan of yours” and added the lawmaker “loves” the plan of creating a Space National Guard.
Spokespeople for President-elect Trump and Rubio did not return requests for comment Wednesday asking about the idea.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, under President Biden, said in 2021 it “strongly opposes” the creation of a Space National Guard, saying it would balloon costs up to $500 million annually. The National Guard Bureau has pushed back on that figure, claiming it would be $250,000 to replace Air National Guard units with space missions’ name tapes, unit flags and signs.
Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on space policy, told Military.com in an interview Wednesday that the creation of a Space National Guard faces its best probability under a Trump administration — but added that it’s not a guarantee.
“I think the odds have gone up that a Space National Guard gets created, but I think it’s still not a sure thing,” Harrison said. “A lot of things get promised during campaigns where the candidate really has no intention of following through, and so this could be one of those things that he said when he was in front of an interest group, and he knew that it’s what they wanted to hear.”
Harrison added that the creation of a Space Guard would likely have to find its way into a future version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act legislation created by Congress and, if it does, it likely wouldn’t be a big enough issue to warrant a veto.
Under Trump’s first term, he signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that created the Space Force — a promise he had made at prior political rallies and an initiative that he’s continued to say was a major victory during his earlier time as commander in chief.
How the president-elect plans to utilize the military remains to be seen, but Trump has been vocal on the campaign trail about tapping it to respond to domestic “enemies from within” and fighting against “woke” ideology within the ranks, Military.com reported.
Harrison added that the Space Force could view Trump’s reelection as an asset because of his role in creating the branch and therefore his understanding of the service’s importance.
“It’s probably a good thing, overall, for the Space Force that you’ve got a president that [has] bought into their existence,” Harrison said. “Whereas in the last administration, they appeared to not really understand that a Space Force had been created and weren’t necessarily bought into it at the beginning, but then pretty quickly came around to it.”
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